Why Tolkien Hated Dune
whitherthewest.com
whitherthewest.com
I'm reminded of a similar rift that I recently discovered on HN, between CS Lewis and Stapledon (author of First and Last Men, and Starmaker). Lewis apparently regarded Starmaker as "devil-worship". This surprised me because there is no devil or indeed any religion in the novel. As best I can tell after a lengthy debate with other HN users, in Lewis's eyes it is devil-worship even to imagine a world bereft of absolute good and evil.
Sometimes it feels like those with very strong faith inhabit a quite different world to me.
Quite an understatement! I grew up in a hyper-religous secluded community overseas, and it was a huge perspective change to see what life is really like outside the bubble. Everyone around me seemed to truly believe that they were in a struggle against demonic powers for all that is true, good, and holy. We were constantly told if we stopped, the world would be plunged into a hellscape of wickedness and evil. Also that most other humans had literally allied with the devil and were actively trying to stop us.
It's wild to write it out now, but that was just how it was. Teachers, parents, and other friends of mine all "knew" some humans were our active enemies, just like they "knew" that we were on the Right Side. Our side was "righteous".
At 17 I moved to a major city in the US, I quickly realized how much of that was completely fabricated. People are all sometimes evil, just like they are sometimes wonderful, selfless, charitable, honest, and caring. I don't know a single person who has "allied with the devil to cast the world into darkness". Turns out that was just a terrifying fairy tale.
It’s no fairy tale. There are people in this world who raise armies of child soldiers and engage in ritual cannibalism and human sacrifice. There are people who build concentration camps and gulags and torture the people imprisoned inside. There are serial killers and child sex traffickers. These people exist. In a modern Western society, we prefer to either live in denial about this or try and develop more sophisticated explanations for this kind of behavior, but there are centuries of intellectual development that needed to happen for us to get here. Most people throughout most of history made sense of the world through myth. If it helps, think of the devil as more of a metaphor.
Though honestly, I think I would make a stronger statement than that. For instance, you can attribute some of this behavior to mental illness, but the concept of mental illness is also a metaphor with almost as many inherent flaws. And even framing these behaviors as mental illness doesn’t work in cases where these behaviors are completely normal to the societies in which they take place. Everyone agrees that Ed Gein was mentally ill because he lived in a culture where murdering women, wearing their skin, and dancing around wasn’t normal, but there have been cultures where human sacrifices with uncanny similarities in ritual have been completely normal. Psychologists and anthropologists have all kinds of theories and explanations for this sort of thing, but it’s not like they have it all figured out. We’re nowhere close to hard science when it comes to explaining this stuff.
Besides, what is science anyway? It’s a set of models to help people make predictions. It’s not fundamental truth. F=ma is a lie that we tell children because unless you’re approaching the speed of light, it’s close enough to get you the right answers. And the psychologists were getting high on cocaine and making up wild theories about men wanting to fuck their mothers around the same time the physicists finally figured out that F=ma isn’t exactly right.
It sounds like you grew up in a weird cult and I’m sympathetic to that, but it’s a mistake to overgeneralize that experience as an example of religious faith in general. There are a lot of religious beliefs that use a mythical framing to encapsulate essential truths about the human experience. Not only did we need that encoding to get where we are today, but in some cases I’m not even sure we’ve come up with any better explanations.
However, I've talked to thousands of Americans who truly believe that roughly half of Americans are in communication with the devil and are part of conspiracy to usher in Satan's reign. This has become a blind spot where wickedness in believers is excused because "they're on our side". Everything is framed in a cosmic scale war between good and evil. When someone "satanic" does a good thing it is waved away as just a ruse to somehow advance the forces of evil. Did "one of us" do something wicked? Well, in war sometimes you have to do hard things to get the job done.
See recent examples of "Christian" politicians and religious leaders who are caught performing sexual assault, theft, bribery, miscarriage of justice, pride, or theft. The churches I grew up in don't even comment on these acts. They've turned entirely from "individuals vs their own sin" to "believers vs a made up demonic army". I've had opportunity to since travel to hundreds of churches along the East Coast and seen the same thing over and over.
Some American churches haven't fallen into this weird demonic conspiracy theory, but I'd wager right now it's the majority of them. You'll hear them talk all day about sin, but always in a frame of "us vs them".
I agree though, that in a historical sense, maybe we needed that explanation that sometimes people are wicked, and it's better to not be wicked. I'm not entirely sure though that religion is the only way those stories get told. Nor that religion has even measurably changed how much wickedness happens per capita.
But as a reply to the OP comment, I think my comments still stand. Believers definitely inhabit a totally different world.
It is not a feeling but a reality. They often live closed off from the outside world unless interaction is strictly needed. Look at the Vatican City, also look at the residential areas in the US where people have everything they need (education, entertainment, etc), also secluded communities in the middle of nowhere. You can find many examples. Worst is if you were born there and you don't know anything
I have Starmaker on the shelf, bought lifetimes ago and... never read. Likewise I have not read Herbert not Tolkien... And now I think I'll slot the Starmaker and then perhaps Dune for the upcoming summer balcony reading period.
...Which makes me point to the core point: there are those low-level notions that are pretty much mutually exclusive. I for one learned quickly that there is no "true good", and that there is no "true evil", either.
Managing to get older my current perspective on this dichotomy is thus:
1) Perfect Good = you're with everyone and everything is perfect... But it's a static frame. Nothing can ever change - as the only change would be straying from the attained perfection!
2) Perfect Evil = and you're fully free to do whatever you want! And have the power to do so! But... you're fully and truly alone. And being the supreme evil of this multiverse you can't end yourself. As in, you can _obviously_, but then you... come back.
And thus both ends of this coin are different but equivalent. Nothing of interest at the logical conclusions.
If it is indeed perfect why would it "have to change"? Just for the sake of it?
Imagine the consequences of such a world and you get his point.
Our world might be objectively "bereft of absolute good and evil", but it's only tolerable to live because most people believe and act counter to that.
And the evil of bad actors "sure of some badly defined absolute good", like the Nazis or the Inquisition, would be nothing compared to the evil of a world where everybody really believed and acted as if good and evil have no absolute and is up to them.
I don't get his point! Firstly, dreaming up a world system is a far cry from worshiping it. Secondly, I feel like striving towards the true nature of things is one of the few principles that really gives meaning to existence. Rejecting this in favour of superficial contentedness feels nihilistic in a Brave New World kinda way.
> the evil of a world where everybody really believed and acted as if good and evil have no absolute
What makes you so sure? In my experience it is societal norms and inbuilt consciences that tend to encourage good behaviour. I don't see why this would change as we evolve away from superstition as a species. For example, some sci fi authors such as Iain M Banks have imagined credible advanced societies where there is no supernatural thinking; and yet individual morality plus social pressures absolutely still work to promote social harmony.
While Mauldin notes that Herbert, “saw religion as an inherently mutable, utilitarian institution”, he seems to have failed to realize the centrality of mutability of perceived religious and moral truth, especially as it comes with distance from the facts on the ground, in Herbert’s writing, and that Dune (in the small or large sense) isn’t a fable with a pat moral lesson. I think its usually a mistake to argue that any but the most simplistic fiction is “about” some message that can fit on a fortune cookie, but I think it is less inaccurate to say that Dune is a challenge to simplistic narratives about the present, past, and morality (whether framed in consequentialist or deontological terms) than it is about any thesis as to what the correct framing of morality is.
Mauldin points out the Golden Path of God Emperor of Dune, but I think he mistakes the eponymous character’s voice for the authorial voice. Leto II Atreides clearly sees his vision of the future and what is necessary to save humanity as warranting any horrors done in its name, but is Herbert saying that? Or is Herbert framing it in a way that the reader while recoil at it even framed with Leto II’s prescience, and from that question acts that seem on their own repugnant done with mere human confidence, and not science fiction prescience, of their distant consequences?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDqeftRRpB0
This video mentions that Tolkien started a sequel to LotR titled The New Shadow but quickly abandoned it after realizing the story would inevitably be about politics and the evil of Men, about the descendants of Aragorn becoming like Denethor, or worse. And Dune is full of politics and far-future men becoming much more sinister than Denethor. LotR is about good vs. evil, about little people having the power to change the world. In Dune almost everyone is self-interested and Machiavellian, the powerful cruelly use the powerless for their own ends.
It gets everywhere!
The article gives no justification for this claim.
To me this seems more obvious:
> Tolkien was a very devout Catholic and Herbert was not exactly friendly towards religion. Herbert saw religion as an inherently mutable, utilitarian institution, and Herbert was dismissive or even openly antagonistic toward religious truths.
Kind of ironically, given that it’s a world that coined “grimdark” and kind of sort of espouses it, it’s also kind of a neat example to point to as a deontologist critique of consequentialism: “see what happens if you let the ends justify the means? you get space orcs! and men who are kind of okay with that!”
Dune and Warhammer seem to have real people, while Warhammer 40K seem to be caricatures. W40K just takes the absurdness too far for me to be able to identify with the characters. Morality does not seem to be a thing in W40K.
Warhammer world, could theoretically be single planet unseen somewhere in 40k, but more likely one of alternative universes with such as Blood Bowl.
40k suffers because most well-known character aren't well that human anymore. It goes for aliens, but also for Emperor, and Primarchs and Space Marines. Still there is lot of room for more human stories, butt they are often played for comedy or the grimdarkness. Or even almost lovercraftian horror...
Fantasy/sci-fi authors aren't under obligation to mutually love each other's work.
Frank Herbert wrote a lot of books, and it was a long time ago that I read them. I don’t remember the consequences ever being particularly great for anyone.
God Emperor of Dune consists largely of a lengthy and emphatic in-universe endorsement of a kind of consequentialism by the eponymous character.
While I think that it is a naive view to do so, its pretty easy to see how a reader might take it as an endorsement of that view by the author.
(OTOH, I think prescience, as featured in the series, really also challenges the idea of deontology and consequentialism as even being different in substance rather than different framings of the same considerations; the idea of a polar divide is, even without it, pretty clearly somewhat artificial – real deontological frameworks tend to incorporate context including known, intended, and reasonably foreseeable consequences in their understanding of what is part of the nature of the act itself, while any real consequentialist framework most adopt some rules as to which a priori outcomes that are viewed as positive or negative, and so the two somewhat blend; when all, or nearly all, outcomes become foreseeable…)
LotR had them do a bunch of hero shit, then everyone either went home to hang out at the pub for a while, or took a boat out west.
Whether Herbert endorses consequentialism in the real world is not something you could guess just from the books. The cost of the good consequences is unfathomably high.
[Edit:] The internet archive has it: https://archive.org/details/the-maker-of-dune-insights-of-a-...
Mighty big asterisk on the “all” there.
As long as [unacceptable sacrifice] is objectively smaller than [benefit], it works as an analogy for real-world consequentialism like the develoment/use of the atom bomb. The book went to some lengths to tell you with certainty that the sacrifice was smaller than the benefit.
Hence they propose an asterisk next to “all”, because “all of humanity” means something more like “humanity as a whole (decided by someone?)” or “humanity (the ones who aren’t dead?)”
The point of Dune books, to some extent, is that the path laid out for humanity was terrible, but still the best possible outcome of all possible ones.
Of course we cannot verify it as a reader, but the trilogy alludes that genocide and despotic power consolidation and religious dogmatism were somehow necessary to prevent an otherwise even more terrible fate for humanity.
Whether that's actually true is left as an exercise for the thinking reader to ponder about.
> Of course we cannot verify it as a reader, but the trilogy alludes that genocide and despotic power consolidation and religious dogmatism were somehow necessary to prevent an otherwise even more terrible fate for humanity.
I agree that certain characters in the books believe this. I think it would be a massive oversimplification to suggest the series wants us to accept that uncritically.
Every now and then I go for a reread, hit a passage talking about a magic sword and the book trying to rawdog convince me that this sword (dagger?) is super cool and awesome by... well outright saying '"this sword is super cool and awesome" (trust me, I'm the narrator) '
I've read all dunes books 8n French, and the version I've read were old and weirdly written, I thought this was a bad translator. Fast forward 15 years, I mostly read books in English, and decide to give it a go again. I think it's worse. Probably my standards are way higher now for fantasy and anticipation (I do not thank you Sanderson).
Still, I now understand Dune better and now think it's a fantastic story if you manage to endure the first ten chapters.
I like Sanderson because he's consistently good at world building and the story itself. Sanderson is one of the best and most consistent world builders in fantasy writing. His magic systems are all interwoven into his societies and reflect the impact magic would have on every day life. His characters are still quite weak, especially women. His prose doesn't seem to be anything special but it's also not a distraction. His mix of world building and story telling more than make up for those weaknesses in most cases.
In one sense, the 'fantasy' being explored by the author in both cases is "how would you live, and what would drive your decisions, if that was you born into that position?".
It does seem natural for ideologically opposed authors to not love each others works. I daresay they were also capable of recognising some good.
However, despite the "intensity", he avoided going into details. That's such a different attitude compared to people today, who would be giving interviews and posting on social media why they hate something at length, how wrong and bad that other thing is, and the person who created it is this and that, etc. I bet if Tolkien knew his private letters would be published for the whole world to see, he might not have even written that letter to start with.
You don’t notice all the people-today who do hold that attitude because, well, that’s the point!
Conversely, many people of Tolkien’s time went on unfair opinionated rants, but the mediums and opportunities available at the time were a bit more limited than today so you mostly just catch glimpses of it in snippets of old magazine reviews/interviews of now-famous books, filed under the Reception section of a Wikipedia article, notable solely for having aged so poorly.
This probably also influenced his decision to just not say anything.
I don't think this is particularly true. A modern working writer in the Hollywood system would probably expect to be blackballed from a studio if they dissed a studio's movie. A working writer for a comic book company would likewise expect to be fired or lose career opportunities if they dissed a comic book company's output. Individual writers working in prose seem to have a bit more leeway in what they can get away with saying, but are likely to be labeled "jealous" if they write a bad review, in particular if it's of a more successful author.
And media tie in authors probably have no independence, I believe Lawrence Miles was banned from writing Doctor Who books because he once wrote a bad review of a doctor who episode.
I think the default today is forced positivity if anything.
How deontologists learn to change their mind (adapt to change) if they prevent themselves from experiment to see the consequences?
It's like long-term health. You can't determine whether cigarettes are good or bad for your longevity by any self-experiment. You can only look at historical data on others.
Likewise, deontologists look at other people's lives to decide which virtues seem worth adopting. It's very time-consuming, because people don't reliably self-report their own virtues. The only way to know if someone is loyal or not is by observing, over a big chunk of their life, how they treat people around them. You have to know a lot of people quite well for a long time to make reliable observations on how virtues affect people's lives.
Since you have to adopt virtues fairly young to get the benefit of them, you don't have time for all this observation. The best you can do is to read the books of wise elders and adopt the virtues they agree on.
Discovering new facts that throw new light on the circumstances of old actions doesn't mean e.g. an evil action became good, but that it was revealed as having been such all along.
On practice, nobody is completely either one of those.